Section 1: Q: Today we are talking with Drake Mabry
of Des Moines and we're at 4115 Tonawanda
Drive in Des Moines, which is his home
address, today being the 18th day of March
2000. We're going to talk a little bit about
the Des Moines Register and Tribune Company
and of course, specifically about the
Tribune, when you were there.
A: And its relationship with the Register.
Q: Drake, I really haven't come across
anyone who has described the Tribune as a
practice paper, at least that was perceptive
of what things were when you came on board.
Not only when you came on, but you said that
you changed it, you changed that perception
of it. What did it mean by people thinking
about it as a practice paper?
A: The idea was that the Tribune was not
as good a newspaper or as a respected a
newspaper as the Register because the
Register was statewide and the Tribune
primarily was central Iowa and Polk County.
It had more papers in Polk County than the
Register but the Register had the prestige,
to the ones out in the state.
Q: Did the employees feel that way? Does
the fact that they were working to move up to
something better?
A: On the Tribune? No, I don't think so.
I think both of us, when I came on board and
while I was writing and then editing it, I
thought it was a pretty damn good newspaper
and it was. It was lively, despite the
practice paper title. We had some very good
writers. Cliff Millen wrote politics and he
was a terrific political writer. Bob Spiegel
was a wonderful writer. Lillian McLaughlin
was almost unbeatable as a kind of a prose
poet. She had a wonderful eye and a
wonderful southern way of writing. So there
were some very good writers. And when Jim
Flansberg started the Tribune. So with all
those people, the Tribune could be a very,
very lively paper. The problem was, it
wasn't edited very well. You have to
understand, the Register and Tribune, in
their heyday, they were really a reporter's
paper. The editors did what I would consider
a minimum amount of directing. Their theory
was to hire reporters that were
self-starters, that had a gleam in their eye
and felt very strongly about getting at the
truth and getting at good stories and chasing
them and pursuing them. So reporters really
made the Register and the Tribune. George
Mills got an award finally, from Northwestern
University. He was a graduate there. And I
wrote a little op ed piece for the Register,
saying in essence, it's about time, because
reporters make editors look good. Two days
later, I got a little note from Ken MacDonald
and he said, in essence, you're so right.
That's the way both the Register and the
Tribune operated and that's the way Dick
Wilson ran the Washington Bureau. It was a
very, very challenging place to work because
they expected so much of you.
Q: You called it a reporter's paper. What
would the difference be? What would the
other side of that be?
A: The other side would be that reporters,
first of all, were not aggressive enough and
did not pursue, couldn't see a story for the
weeds and the editors would direct most of
the news coverage, the type of thing that
ends up in the paper.
Q: What would be wrong with that?
A: Because the editors aren't out on the
street. The editors aren't tuned to the
nuances of reporting and what techniques to
use. That's why they are editors. They may
be very good editors, with a piece of
property, but by and large, really not very
aggressive as far as dictating the coverage.
They gave you the freedom to do it and that's
the creative output. --
Section 2: Q: You were a general assignment reporter
when you first started. I wonder if you
could talk about the more interesting stories
that you remember from those days, back in
'56. What was it like being a general
assignment reporter starting at the Tribune?
A: I was a new kid on the block. I was
originally scheduled to go to the courthouse
but I got started on some general assignments
and stuff and never got to the courthouse.
One of the odd things we used to do as a
rookie, is we used to have to cover the
convention beat and there may be three, four
or five conventions in town at that time.
So, when Flansberg was there, he did the same
thing. We'd go out and we'd scout around and
we'd find a very interesting convention or an
interesting speaker. Then our mode was to
make it so good, they had to put it on page
one. And we succeeded some, on doing that.
They don't do that anymore. So, it was a
really good training ground. Eventually, I
left general assignment reporting and I
started covering the Highway Commission.
That was when the planning and building of
the interstate highways and freeways.
Q: I want to talk more about later, but I
do want to ask you, what made a convention
story good?
A: Say you went to a Weed Commission
meeting. We had, every year, a Weed
Commissioners meeting. Most people don't
even know there is such a thing as a County
Weed Commission. So you build a story on the
unusual job of here's a guy who is paid from
public money, to do whatever with weeds,
whether he counts them or whether he tries to
kill them or keep them mowed or whatever.
You can build an interesting story out of
that. You know, Frank Eyerly used to say,
there are no dull news days. There are only
dull reporters and dull editors. So, that's
what we did.
Q: I'd like you to talk more about that
kind of baptism by fire, not at the Register
but when you were doing baptism by fire, cops
and courts at the Mason City Polk Gazette.
Because that was, like you say, a learning
experience.
A: Yes, I went there directly out of the
University of Iowa. W. Earl Hall was the
editor. It was a Lee newspaper. And it was
kind of sleepy but it was a decent newspaper.
And I went there because I knew that I could
get a little taste of everything. So I
covered every beat at one time or another. I
even put out a farm tab once, covered society
news. I worked part-time on sports, covered
sports events. Wrote features. Covered the
cops. Covered the courthouse, which led to a
big brouhaha. I was city editor when he was
on vacation. I ran the wire desk when the
wire man was on vacation. I knew the
composing room. So you really got a full
basket of everything that putting out a daily
newspaper is involved in. I tried to use
that to a full extent.
Q: And the production side of it, too?
A: The production side, yes. You got to
know all these old printers and you
understood the reason for deadlines and why
it took them so long sometimes. You learned
how the paper got put together, in those days
of lead type, the linotypes and all that
stuff. So, I considered it a learning
experience. And I only stayed there about
nine months.
Q: How was it that you ended up at the
Register from Mason City?
A: I was in journalism school with Dwight
Jenson and his wife, Pat. And he came to the
Register and called me up one day and said,
"The Tribune is looking for a courthouse
reporter." So I applied and went down and
interviewed with Frank Eyerly and was offered
the job. That's how I got there. One of the
reasons why I got there was because the pay,
in those days was really fairly miserable.
And I was about to get married. I'll never
forget this - Earl Hall was a wonderful man
and he wrote all the editorials. He put the
editorial page out by himself. It wasn't all
that vigorous, but he came by my desk, see,
he had a habit of walking out in the newsroom
and swinging his glasses around like this
[illustrates]. And he came by my desk one
time and he said, "I think you're going to
have a little more money in your paycheck
next week." And I said, "Gee! Thanks,
Earl." And when I got my paycheck the next
week and got a $2.25 raise. [laughter]. So
I figured I'm going to move out of here. And
about that time, Dwight called and I came
down. That's how I got started at the
Register and Tribune.
Q: How much was the pay at the Register
when you started?
A: Same amount as I was making up there.
But it was bigger; it had a bigger staff. It
was a prestigious paper. I figured I'd spend
a year on the courthouse beat and I'd learn
how to run a courthouse beat, like Clark
Mollenhoff, ran the courthouse beat for the
Register for years before he went to
Washington. So I figured it was a good move.
Again, it was another learning experience.
I never got there because I was so busy on
general assignment stuff. --
Section 3: Q: Frank Eyerly? How was he to work for?
A: Frank was, from a reporter's
standpoint, Frank was wonderful to work for.
But he was sure hell on editors. Desk men,
copy editors and he was especially hell on
news editors. He was very critical of the
news coverage, of the news choices,
sometimes. The Register used to send the
first edition out to Eyerly about ten o'clock
every night. You've probably heard this
story before.
Q: I have, but go ahead.
A: And they'd sit there, and they'd be
sort of trembling, you know, waiting for the
phone to ring. That was the fear. But it
was really not all that unusual. I'll tell
you a wonderful story. When Stuffy Waldows
one time, was the managing editor of the
papers, and he went from there to Minneapolis
and then Chicago Daily News, but in those
days, his office was about two steps up from
the main newsroom floor. And when the first
edition came off and it went into Stuffy's
office, all those guys would sit there and
wait to hear that first step, when he hit it
running, BANG like that. They could gauge,
almost, how serious Stuffy was with the walk
he got, hitting that first step, coming out
waving the newspaper, you understand. So
Frank wasn't any different, really, but he
was hell on news editors. They couldn't keep
him happy. And he fired some really good
news editors who went on to other newspapers.
Denver and on the East Coast. But he didn't
have that same feeling about reporters. He'd
come out and ask you to go to lunch with him,
frequently. He really liked reporters. He
didn't instill the fear of God in them, like
he did copy editors and all that sort of
stuff. So it was a different relationship
and I never really understood that. I don't
know why that would be, because reporters are
the first line of anything that goes in the
paper. So I just never understood that.
Q: Give me an example of something that
might rile him up.
A: What would really - I can't think of
anything specific right off hand, but what
would really rile him up would be if he found
something inside the paper that he thought
should be on page one. He had a well-tuned
news judgment. People were critical of it
sometimes but he had the best news judgment
by what readers should know and would want to
know, than most editors I know. He wasn't
perfect. I know he put a banner on the
divorce between Marilyn Monroe and Joe
DiMaggio. And he was criticized for that.
But he knew it was a hell of a readable
story. In those days, too, the Register -
you had to have a banner. You had to have an
eight-column screamer.
Q: We talked about that.
A: Across the top of the page. Of course,
news doesn't always fit that sort of
screaming banner. Sometimes it's not that
important. But the Register, for years, had
to have it. And that resulted in some
over-playing of stories, but it was something
we had to live with. Later they changed that
and made more of a balance out of it, so you
could get some gauge if the reader was
sensitive enough, to how important the story
was. If it carried an eight-column banner,
it was really an important story. Or if you
had just one column or two columns. Frank
also demanded a reader, what he called a
reader, on each page, which was sort of an
off-beat, below the fold unusual type of
story. It could have been a feature. It
could have been almost anything that didn't
have a hard news edge to it, but was awfully
interesting.
Q: What was the thinking behind that?
Just to open up the paper more?
A: No, it was to give page one some
diversity. And I'm a believer in that. Most
papers will have a similar theory. You don't
want all doom and gloom on page one. You
like that little sparkle out there. There
used be - I can't think of his name, but
there used to be a guy on the Chicago Daily
News, the old Chicago Daily News, who was an
expert at that. The city editor or the news
editor might all the sudden turn around and
hand him a piece of paper and say, "Here,
make me laugh." That was his job. To take
this cute little thing and put a twist on it
and give the reader a laugh or grin, amidst
all the crooks and the disasters.
Q: It's kind of a paradox, because you
think about today, the paper today is
focusing all on this metro Des Moines stuff.
Let's keep things local and everything, but
the real paper that Iowa depended on was the
Register, actually covered the entire world.
When you talk about a reader, that wouldn't
have just been from Iowa.
A: Right, it could have been from
anywhere. And you're right, the Register was
truly a state newspaper. It had a marvelous
Washington Bureau. They had the Big Peach
sports section with photographs that nobody
else could have, the ones from the press box
and the ones looking down. And they had a
plane. They had a very good editorial page.
To some of us, the editorial page is really
the soul of the newspaper. That's one way,
maybe the major way, if you can judge a
newspaper. And they had a really long string
of good editorial writers. And editorial
editors, starting with Marv McGaphin, Lauren
Soth, of course and Flansberg
Q: Who did you say? Marv McGaphin?
A: Marv McGaphin. He was one of the early
ones when the Cowles were still in Des
Moines. Flansberg. Cranberg. They all ran
very savvy editorial pages who understood
what an editorial page should be. It not
only has to be diverse, but it has to speak
for the institution. That's part of the soul
of a newspaper. You know, a newspaper has
got to stand for something. Not many people
really realize that. The Register always
did. It stood for Iowa. It stood for
honesty and it stood for fairness. But it
was very, very aggressive. That's why it was
as dominant as it was. Because nobody else
in Iowa was doing that sort of thing. So
they had a responsibility and they felt it,
very strongly. Certainly the reporters felt
it because they had a stack of wonderful,
very smart, savvy reporters. To start with,
was George Mills, of course. I mean, people
don't realize it, but George Mills sometimes
almost, I swear, almost wrote the whole
Sunday paper. He had stories sticking out of
both hip pockets. And he'd say, "Well, which
one do you want?" And truly, he was
obsessive about the news and getting it in
the Register. That's why I was able to set
the agenda, which goes a long with the
editorial page being the soul. When the
newspaper has to be strong enough and
aggressive enough to set the agenda by
running investigative stories, not waiting
for somebody to come out with a press
release, but pursuing a story deeper than any
press release could go. That's how it made
its reputation. --
Section 4: Q: You brought this up, the fact early on,
that you were doing some investigative
reporting yourself, about the interstate
highway that was coming to Des Moines, the
Des Moines freeway?
A: Yes.
Q: There were some surprises. I mean, a
little more digging and you found that there
was something that made you dig deeper.
A: There are a lot of things. First of
all, I did it almost full time. So I had the
time to really study and understand what this
highway building was all about. And in the
process, I'd cover the commission and pretty
soon, I'd go and I used to roam the hallways
at the Highway Commission. I admit I have a
couple of moles who would tell me about
problems they heard about. One of them was
in the attorney's office, so he was my best
one. So I picked up an awful lot of other
stuff.
Q: A mole is a source?
A: A mole is a source, yes.
Q: Quoted or not quoted?
A: Not quoted. He's a tipster. He says,
"Hey, you ought to go look at this." "I
heard this the other day." So, it was a very
complicated job, building interstate highway
systems, and it was enormously expensive.
And it's a very difficult thing for them to
keep track of what the hell they were doing,
since it was so widespread. That opened up
all sorts of avenues. One of them, my
favorite one was, they were building the
Interstate west, Interstate 80 West and
before they even got traffic on it, the
trucks were going back and forth, building
the rest of it down the road. Before they
even let traffic on it, the thing began to
break up. We're talking about a million
dollars every couple miles. What happened
was, that some guy - they suspected that
there was a lot of water trapped underneath
there. So one of the workers got a pick ax
and got out in the middle of the road and he
chopped a hole in the surface of this very
newly paved road. And a geyser of water shot
up, about 8-10 feet in the air.
Q: Oh, no!
A: Of course, they had to go back and make
repairs. What they did was, they dug in from
the shoulders and put drainage pipes every so
often, so the water would have some place to
go besides working its way up. And that was
all in addition. It was lousy planning. It
was lousy engineering. It was just lousy
everything. That's the sort of thing that I
worked for in addition to the usual progress
and how much it was costing and all that sort
of thing. Another thing, after I was on it a
while, what I became convinced of, was that
there was some sort of collusion between
asphalt contractors and concrete contractors.
Because the Highway Commission, they'd have
a 20-30 mile stretch of road that was asphalt
and then all of the sudden, you're on
concrete. I could never get an answer that
satisfied me of why they built some with
asphalt and some with concrete. They kept
saying, "Well, you know, the bids looked
better." And we didn't know whether they did
or not. So I spent about two weeks one time,
going back over all the bid forms. I wasn't
smart enough or good enough. I needed an
accountant and I needed an engineer and they
weren't available. So I gave up, not without
niggling them a little bit, though. One time
- they used to open the bids for highways in
a Des Moines hotel. They'd rent a ballroom
and all the contractors would show up and
they would open the bids. I sent a
photographer up one time to photograph this
process. And it scared the beejeezus out of
them because they didn't have any idea what I
wanted that for. And why was I interested in
bid openings and all that stuff. Well, I
couldn't get at it, but later, the Justice
Department Strike Force, out of Omaha, did
get at it. And the presidents of some of
those highway contractors were found guilty
of collusion and bid rigging. Some of them
went to jail. I was just sure in my own
bones that something like that was going on,
but I couldn't get at it.
Q: You couldn't document it?
A: No, I couldn't document it. And
certainly nobody was going to tell me. But I
knew that there was something going on
between the asphalt and the concrete people.
Q: Did somebody call your attention to
that, or did you just take an interest in
that?
A: No. When you're up there and they
approve a construction contract, during a
meeting or something, some of them go to an
asphalt contractor and some go to a concrete
contractor and it was just in the normal flow
of things. And I could never figure it out.
The answer I always thought was, well we want
to split the spoils. That's also suspicious.
How do you split the spoils on what was
supposed to be a low-bid basis?
Q: Had you had any experiences as an
investigative reporter before these times?
A: No, none. I was a babe in the woods,
as most reporters are. It takes an awful lot
of expertise in order to get the facts and to
prove something.
Q: Was there anybody you could turn to on
the staff?
A: Well, I did. I talked with Mollenhoff
in Washington about it, in the middle of all
this process on the Highway Commission, why
roads are breaking up. I made what I thought
was some arrangements for one of the staff
investigators on the Senate, who was also an
accountant and that was very helpful to
Mollenhoff in some of this stuff, to come out
and take a look at all this. He never made
it out here. Otherwise, there wasn't any
help available. I just threw up my hands. I
figured it was going to come out some time
and of course, it did. --
Section 5: Q: Still, if it was a reporter's tip and
you're calling the shots...I mean, an editor
couldn't say, you know, this is where we need
to go.
A: No, this was all on my own. There was
another similar instance at the Iowa Liquor
Commission. Iowa adopted liquor by the drink
in 1963. And in those days, the legislature
met only every other year. So I was always
scouting around for something to do in the
interim to keep me busy so I wasn't at the
mercy of the city desk. And liquor by the
drink was the one thing that that particular
year, that I happened to follow, which was a
big change in Iowa. I became almost married
to the enforcement people. Larry Scalise was
at one time, Attorney General, which headed
up the enforcement. They hired another
friend of mine from the old days, a Chief of
Detectives with the Des Moines Police
Department, Eugene McCarthy. And I was
almost wedded to those guys because I wanted
to keep track of what was going on and what
the troubles were. And it was very fruitful.
But in this process, I really got the
feeling that the commission was too much in
cahoots with the liquor people, the
manufacturers and the salesmen. I thought
that one time when I was in talking to the
chairman. He was Homer Adkoff. He was an
old-time Democratic Pole in Polk County. You
know, one of the guys that got a good job not
because he was very good at it, but because
he was a Democrat. And Homer was always very
friendly and I was in talking to him one time
and there was a table there, loaded with
bottles, samples. One time when there was a
lull in the conversation, he said, "Drake,"
he says, "You can help yourself to whatever
you want over on that table. They're all
samples. You can put them in a bag and take
them with you." And of course, I didn't
bite. But I just knew there was something
there. There wasn't even records I could go
at. I went over the sales, the buying
record. It was all public. I went over all
that. I just knew it. And I was right.
Several years later, Homer was found to be on
the take and he spent several years in jail,
and he was an old man, by that time. He grew
old and feeble in jail. So, there's a
certain intuition of really good reporters.
Q: When you have these inklings, like when
you saw what was happening with the
Interstate and then of course, what must have
been the collusion between the liquor
companies and the commission, is there
anything you can write? What did you write
at the time?
A: I covered almost everything they did.
And I was always in sight and I was always
looking over their shoulder. They knew that
I was there. But I couldn't write anything.
I said, "Hey look, there may be a chance that
these three commissioners are in the back
pocket of the liquor salesmen or the liquor
producers." I just knew when to throw in the
towel. I mean, you just couldn't prove it.
Q: But the fact that you were there was a
kind of regulation.
A: I hope so. That's why I was there.
And that's why I was doing it. I was
especially there with the enforcement branch.
But I knew both police and E. J. McArthur
and they knew me. They knew that I don't
take any crap. And I can be very demanding
if I have to be. So, I'm convinced that
operation was run pretty well, actually. I
don't think there was any way anybody could
get a liquor license if the enforcement
division said, "Nah, you've got a bad
record." I mean, I don't think anybody could
buy a liquor license in this state, through
the Liquor Commission, anybody with a tainted
reputation.
Q: There is an interesting segue way from
that to the memories that you have about the
sheriff's party, where the booze got
confiscated.
A: That was a shock to me. I talked about
the Tribune staff and they had some really
good reporters and good writers, but they
also had a bunch of old hands. They weren't
exactly dogs but they were - like the guy
that covered the police station - he had been
there so long, he almost thought of himself
as a cop.
Q: I've heard this story. Tell me, what
was his name?
A: Guy Taloose. The other guy, the other
old-timer was a guy by the name of Fred
Petit. He was kind of a courthouse reporter,
general assignment reporter and he had been
around a long time.
Q: Before you go any further, there is a
story about Guy Taloose, when he died, the
police department lined up along his coffin
at his funeral - I guess it was [?] who told
me this story - and they saluted him as his
coffin passed by.
A: I didn't know that, but I'm not
surprised at all.
Q: Anything you can remember that gave you
an indication at the time, that he was in
their pocket or anything?
A: You can't say he was in their pocket.
He was just too damn close to them. I'm sure
that he would hold up on some stories if they
wanted him to. On the other hand, they might
have given him some stories that he wouldn't
otherwise get, because he was a buddy. But
it's a very bad relationship from a newsman's
standpoint. You just don't form - everything
should be at arm's length. And those guys
were in the bosom. The sheriff was a
Democrat named Wilbur Hilder. He'd been
sheriff a long time. He used to have a cabin
out in the woods somewhere. Once a year,
he'd throw a party. He'd tell Fred Petit and
Taloose, you can invite some of your buddies.
One year, of course, many of us went. I
tell you, it's a shock to look over there and
see your news editor throwing craps with the
chief of police or something, for real money.
The bar was wide open, with booze that they
had confiscated in raids and didn't have to
be accounted for any more. There was a lot
of gambling going on, a lot of drinking. And
nobody really thought a whole lot about it,
except some of the youngsters that had come
on board.
Q: Newsmen?
A: Yes, newsmen that had come on board.
Flansberg and myself and several other guys,
we began to wonder - reporters shouldn't be
doing this. And neither should news editors,
for crying out loud! So, we let Petit and
those guys know and the annual sheriff's
party just sort of petered out.
Q: Oh, it was an annual party?
A: It was an annual party, yes. They held
it every year. They had to get rid of their
booze somehow, you know. We might as well
drink it up ourselves.
Q: With the reporters?
A: With the reporters, yes. With our
friends of the press.
Q: So, was that just the Register people
or would they bring in people from -
A: I think they would bring in some
Register people. I don't really remember but
I'm sure there were. --
Section 6: Q: Moving on to another topic, later you
became the managing editor of the Tribune.
A: Right.
Q: Sometimes I get the feeling, since you
were in the same building, the Register and
the Tribune, that there was this kind of
friendly competition. But there was no
friendly competition going on. You were -
A: Well, ,yeah, there was. There was, on
the surface. I mean, we didn't stiff on each
other. But it was certainly competitive from
the standpoint of getting stories and getting
the news. From that standpoint, yea, we
wouldn't give them zilch. Although we might
be down drinking in the office saloon the
next day, we wouldn't tell the Register folks
about it. That's where the phrase, the
Tribune being a practice paper was bandied
about, by some smart-asses on the Register.
And I think that was a general feeling on the
Register because we had too many good people
that they had to admire us. And we got so
many good stories that they didn't have a
handle on. But there had to be some respect
there, at least for the reporters.
Q: Did you see a trend where there was
movement from the Tribune to the Register?
If people had gotten very good, no one stayed
at the Tribune?
A: I wouldn't call it a trend. Flansberg,
of course, went from the Tribune to the
Register. Don Kahl went from the Tribune to
the Register. Of course, Don Kahl had an
awful time as a reporter, when he was on the
Tribune.
Q: Tell me about that.
A: Well, one time - the Tribune had a
re-write desk but it was run by the former
city hall reporter and it was just one guy.
He wasn't the fastest guy in the world and he
was usually busy taking dictation from other
reporters and one time, there was a highway
patrolman missing, down in southern Iowa,
down around Sheridan. Nobody had heard from
him for days, nobody at the State Patrol. So
they finally found him and he was shacked up
in a motel with a girl down in southern Iowa,
near Sheridan. Well, I was dictating the
story to Kahl because he was the guy that
happened to be available when I called. And
I was dictating the story to him.
Q: He was what, a copy editor?
A: No, he was a reporter. He just
happened to be walking by the city desk when
I called and they needed someone to take my
dictation, so they grabbed him and set him
down at the typewriter and put some earphones
on him. But it was down near Sheridan and I
remember, Kahl's the only guy I know that
could spell Sheridan seven different ways
with none of them right. He was a wonderful
columnist. I wish he had stayed in Des
Moines instead of going to Washington,
because he was a wonderful columnist. But he
had his problems as a good reporter. He
wanted to cover a cat show one time and the
city editor wouldn't let him.
Q: A cat show?
A: A cat show. I wish he would have. I
mean, even in those days, he had to have that
nice touch. You know, kind of the wry and
ironic view of things. I wish he had written
the story. That was the kind of story that
newspapers need these days.
Q: But you're saying his reporting wasn't
up to par? Or his grammar wasn't?
A: He was just never comfortable as an
on-the-spot reporter where speed is important
and accuracy is important. In those days,
being able to dictate a story was important.
Some people just didn't have that knack of
dictation. In other words, you would write a
story off the top of your head and you talked
it into the guy at the rewrite desk. That
was a common occurrence for the afternoon
Tribune, because our deadlines were so short.
We didn't have time to come in the office
and write a story. Most of the stuff that I
wrote out of the legislature was dictated
from the press bench in the senate chamber,
talking it to a guy with a typewriter in the
office. That's very crude by today's
standards, when you have laptops and you can
zap it into the computer in five seconds.
Q: You'd be surprised. Some of the
correspondents - [inaudible]. Logistically
speaking, how did that work? Did you write
the story or were you writing it in your head
and speaking it?
A: I had a system which served me very
well. I had my notes, and before I dictated,
I would get set in my mind what the lead
ought to be. And I'd go through there,
through my notes, very quickly and use a
numbering and underlining system. One, two,
three, four, five. And you can do that in
about two minutes. You could do it on the
back of an envelope if you had to. So by the
time I started to dictate, I knew in my mind
what direction I was going to go. And I just
wrote it as I went along. I'd write a lead
and then I'd go to number one and I'd dictate
that, that point, then I would go to two. It
might be at all different points in your
notebook or on your pad.
Q: But you weren't writing out a story
then. You were saying, "Here's my lead and
now here is the second paragraph."
A: No - I was writing the story. The
story went as I dictated it, or as anybody
dictated it. It's a technique that not
everybody could do. I handled it pretty
well. The best example that I know of is the
AP guy. He was down in Little Rock. His
name escapes me right now, be he was at the
civil rights disturbance outside the high
school. And he had commandeered a telephone
booth. Saul Patton - he was a wonderful guy
and a wonderful writer. He commandeered a
telephone booth right across the street. So
he's standing in a telephone booth and he had
the AP rewrite man on the telephone and he
was dictating as things were happening.
That's very difficult to do. But he tells
this story - and then he says, the telephone
booth began to go like this [illustrates] and
it kept getting bigger and bigger and Saul
kept talking and dictating and pretty soon,
he was on his side and the telephone booth
was horizontal and so was Saul and he was
dictating away all that time. Well, not
because of that story, but he won a Pulitzer
for his civil rights coverage that same year.
Q: This was a guy with the Register?
A: No, a guy with the AP, one of the AP
guys. So, that's an extreme of dictation.
If you've got three or four minutes, you can
organize it. It takes a lot of concentration
but you can organize it in your head and you
can organize it on your notebook, so you go
one, two, three, four. But you're dictating
the actual story all along. --
Section 7: Q: You said that there were no formal
budgets for the newsroom up until when?
A: Not in those days. I didn't think
anything about that when I took over the
Tribune and I starting hiring people and
doing different things and spending money.
Q: What is a formal budget?
A: You go through - it's just like the
legislature goes through a budget hearing,
how much you spend. The newspaper people go
through a budget and they argue with the
publisher and there is a budget for the
advertising and the news, the production
department and all that sort of stuff. So,
in this case, the newsroom - there was a
newsroom budget. You get so much for
salaries and so much for travel and so much
for this and so much for the photographic
department. We didn't have any of that. I
mean, we just spent the money, at least I
did. This really didn't occur to me as being
very important until far later when I became
familiar with budgets and all that sort of
thing. But there was no budget.
Q: No meddling from the publisher?
A: No, very little. I mean, sometimes
you'd have to go into the managing editor and
say, well, I'm going to send a guy to
whatever. Shortly after I became managing
editor of the Tribune, I sent Gammack, Gordon
Gammack...
Tape One Side Two
Q: We were talking about Gordon Gammack.
Describe who he was again.
A: Gordon Gammack was a front page
columnist for the Tribune. He's an old war
correspondent. He covered World War II and
he covered Iowans in World War II. He was
very popular and he was very successful. So,
I had made a pitch one time, before I became
an editor, to go to Vietnam. And Frank
Eyerly wouldn't let me. So after I became an
editor, I sent Gammack to Vietnam. I can
remember when I asked him. He worked back in
a cubicle at the back of the building. And I
went back and I said, "Gammack, you want to
go to Vietnam?" He said "You kidding?" And
I said, "No." He reached for the phone right
there and called somebody he knew in
Washington to start the process of getting
accredited to go. He's a marvelous reporter.
I worried a lot about him being so old. He
was nearing sixty, I suppose, in those days.
But he was unstoppable. He went and spent
about a month and a half over there the first
time. The second time, he went back and
spent about thirty days. Then, the third
time, he was in Manila for the prisoner
exchange, which was an example of how an old
reporter's technique that covers city hall
and every courthouse reporter worth a salt
knows, when the prisoners came back, they
were secluded. Reporters couldn't get at
them, couldn't talk to them. They held no
press conferences, what kind of health they
were in, what kind of wounds they had, how
was their emotional state, all this sort of
stuff. And there was a whole pack of
reporters out there, big guns, waiting for
all this stuff. When Gammack found out that
there were two doctors from Iowa on the team
of doctors examining these guys, he took them
out to dinner one night and they became his
source and they gave him a lot of really,
really good stuff about what kind of shape
the prisoners were in, who they were, what
their experiences were, because they talked
to all these guys. And they relayed a lot of
that to Gammack and pretty soon, Gammack was
filing stuff about the prisoners that nobody
else had. I mean, the New York Times, the AP
- nobody had that stuff. And Gammack tells
the story, he says, one time he was typing
away and there was a guy looking over his
shoulder. And it was a guy from the AP - I
can't think of his name - Peter. But he'd
also won a Pulitzer for coverage. And he
said, "I hear that you've got some really
great stuff about these guys coming back."
And Gammack says, "Yes, but you can't have
it." So he worked out a deal with the AP
that Gammack would file the story and we
would get it in the paper and then the AP
could use it. I mean, there was a very quick
turnaround. That was simply to protect the
sources that gave it to him. But it was a
simple reporter's trick of finding somebody
who knows and lining them up to tell you
what's going on. Reporters do that all the
time.
Q: And the fact that the doctors were from
Iowa.
A: Well, sure. They knew who Gordon
Gammack was. They knew his column. They
knew him, probably, from his World War II
coverage and he covered Korea, too. He was
in Korea, too, which is why I sent him back.
He was marvelous. He did some really great
stuff, great stories, about young Iowa kids
being sent out on search missions and the
sole purpose was to capture a couple soldiers
and bring them back alive for the
intelligence guys to interview them and talk
to them and try to find out what was going
on. But can you imagine- a seventeen,
eighteen, nineteen year old kid, from this
little town in Iowa, out there in those
jungles all darkened up and creeping around
like an Indian, trying to capture the enemy
alive. And Gammack can write those kind of
stories without them sounding really corny,
you know. He's no frills, no nothing, just
bare bones facts and reports and quotes. He
even had his camera out. I gave him a camera
the first time he went and he took some
pictures. The first ones really weren't very
good and I went back to the photo department
and I said, "Neil, what's wrong with these
pictures?" And he looked at them and he
said, "Well, what kind of camera was he
using?" I said, "I don't know." Turned out
that he had a camera with a plastic lens in
it, one of those cheapies. So I got about
$300 put together and I bought Gammack a
really good camera that was simple to run,
like any one you and I would use. And the
next time he went, he had a decent camera and
he got decent pictures. It's just amazing
what you can get out of story like that for a
home town or home state paper. All you have
to do is go out there.
Q: Like you say, you had the unlimited
budget to go ahead and do that. How did you
go about getting the money?
A: I just told them I was sending him.
Q: You didn't have the executives saying I
need the money for this -
A: No. I just said, oh, by the way,
Gammack is going back to Vietnam. "Oh, good
idea!" There was no question about how much
it cost. Gammack worried about it. We used
to talk back and forth by the wire. He used
the AP - AP had a direct wire between Saigon
and New York. It was clean line - for their
use only. And he used to file his stuff
through the AP, in New York and then they
would file it back to me on the wire. It
didn't take very long. And he told me one
time - he was kind of worried about what it
was costing. He wanted to know - this is
typical Gammack - he says, "I've been eating
an awful lot of strawberries on shortcake
over here in Saigon and they are in season,
but they are really expensive." I had to
wire back to him, "For Christ sakes, Gammack,
don't worry about strawberries!" He was just
an amazing man. One time - you know, he
still had friends in the military from his
stints in Korea. And he would use them, he
would get in touch with them and they were
remarkably open to him because he was an old
guy and we got to kind of look after him. So
they tipped him some really good stories.
One of them was the invasion of Laos. He was
right behind them. One time I sent him up
somewhere, it wasn't the Dien Bien Phu, but
it was something like that. And some stuff
was going to happen. And he went up there
and he came back and I got this note that
said he lost his notebook. He was sleeping
on the ground in a tent somewhere up there
and he simply lost his notebook. You know,
he restructured, recreated that whole goddamn
notebook, almost complete from memory, with
names and addresses and not one of them was
wrong. They all checked out. We used to
check the names and addresses in his stuff,
because editors do that just to make sure
that it was right. And he just recreated it.
Didn't hardly skip a beat. I wish every
reporter was like that. He was bored writing
a column, a page one column. It was full of
little tidbits and gee whiz paragraphs and
gee, did you hear about this and that sort of
stuff and he was bored. He needed
revitalizing and he did.
Q: That did it, huh? --
Section 8: A: Lil McLaughlin, who is the lady writer
I mentioned earlier, was about the same way.
She was bored. She hated the city editor.
The city editor didn't give her decent stuff.
Q: Who was that?
A: A guy by the name of Doyle Taylor.
He's dead now, so I guess I can give you his
name. But Taylor and Lil didn't get a long
at all, and Lil just wasn't doing much.
She's a marvelous writer. She's from
Greenville, Mississippi, and she grew up
there and she knew the Greenville paper, that
would stand on civil rights. So, I tried to
revitalize her and give her some really good
assignments. She went down to the Truman
home one time, to talk-
Q: The what?
A: The Truman home. They had some sort of
a do down there. And she told me, "That's
the first time I've been out of the state for
thirty years, on a job." So I tried to turn
her loose. And I did and she wrote some
really tender, sensitive writing. You have
to keep...as an editor, you got to give
people the freedom. First of all, you got to
get good people. Then you got to give them
the freedom to go. I think I mentioned
somewhere, when I first became editor of the
Tribune, I set up a three-person task force,
for lack of a better word. I called them the
tree-shakers. And they worked for me. They
didn't go through the city desk or didn't go
through the news editor, they were under my
control.
Q: These were reporters?
A: One editor and two reporters. And
later, one photographer. But I hired all
these guys. The editor was a former bureau
chief for the AP in Des Moines. And I knew
them all, too. The best writer was an AP guy
who was in Atlanta, covering the southeast,
for golf, for AP sports. The third writer
was a guy in New York, writing about pro
football. I just hired them all and brought
them back and we set up this little task
force. Later on, I managed to hire a guy
away from National Geographic, a guy by the
name of Tom Defrayo, who is a marvelous
photographer. So that was our little strike
force and they took great pride in it. Their
job was to go out and root around and find
good stories. They were great at it. They
could move fast. They were all wire service
guys so they could process copy fast. They
could write fast. And they had good eyes and
good ears and they produced some really
wonderful exclusives that nobody else could
get. I never heard a whimper from the city
desk. I expected I might, but nobody ever
said anything. I just simply by-passed them.
Q: How were they different, how were the
tree-shakers were different from a reporter
going out?
A: They weren't any different. These were
the big boppers. They were experienced
hands. They knew what they were doing. They
knew what their job was and they knew how to
do it. No, not every reporter understands
that. --
Section 9: Q: You said so many things here, I don't
want to lose what we were talking about.
Gammack being one, where you talked about
getting information, what? I guess from wire
services? Or, from where the action was
going to be and then relaying that to him, to
get him there? Was that how it worked?
A: No. How it worked was, he did his own
thing over there.
Q: When he was there, you would send him
somewhere?
A: I could talk with him through the
Saigon bureau chief, who could talk to him
out in the field, because there was usually
another AP guy around, especially up in the
press center in Danang, where Gammack would
be when he wasn't in Saigon or when he wasn't
out in the field. So I had to talk through
the AP to him. That's what I mean. It
wasn't on the phone. It wasn't like, I say
this and he said that. It was all by
message, by written word. And I paid pretty
good attention to what was going on. And I
would just make a suggestion. I mean, he's
the one that told me about the invasion of
Laos, which was highly secretive at the time.
But one of his old World War II or Korean
War buddies, who was a public information
officer, told him about it. And that's how
we messaged. You know, "Do you think I ought
to go?" And it came back to me and I said
yes. So he went. He just climbed right up
on a truck and away he went. Sixty-years old
and he was terrific.
Q: How many trips did he make to Vietnam?
A: He made two to Vietnam, each of them
about 30-45 days, something like that. I
didn't want to keep him there all that time,
because that's tough. It's really tough on
you. The second time he went, it was with
some specific ideas for coverage that we
talked about, the main one being a phenomena
over there called fragging. It was where the
kids, the drunk soldiers would get mad at
their sergeants or their second lieutenants,
their platoon leaders or something and
literally not only harass them and not do
what he says, but try to harm him. That was
a process called fragging. And I really
wanted to know how widespread that was. He
did several stories on that his second time
over. So he did have some specific stuff.
The war was winding down by then anyway. The
AP bureau chief was really great. He became
good friends with both of us. I'm thinking
of that AP guy's name. I can't think of it
right off hand. I got his book.
Q: Was his name Peterson?
A: Peter Arnett.
Q: He's on CNN now.
A: He's at CNN, yes. Peter Arnett. He
was the guy that was in Manila with the
prisoner exchange. He didn't know any more
than anybody else. Actually, Gammack and him
became really good friends. Peter used to
stop by Des Moines sometimes and Gammack
would put on a chicken fry or something for
him. But I just can't - you know, reporters
- I said this before - reporters make editors
look good. And I've got example after
example of how good writers and good
reporters and good copy editors can really -
you know, I can kind of bask in their
sunshine, because they did it all. All I did
was give them the freedom.
